COMMUNITY JOURNALISM DOES NOT HAVE TO BE IN DECLINE
There is a widespread complaint that local journalism is in decline because newspapers are dying off. It’s true that newspapers are shutting down throughout the United States, but does that really mean that local journalism is disappearing?
Maybe, but that does not have to be so.
It has never been so easy or so cheap to launch a news business and publish the news as it is now. The electronic infrastructure for news publishing today is beyond the wildest dreams of journalists who were working just two or three decades ago. Current conditions now make it literally possible to launch and maintain a one-person news site. Lone journalists with an Internet connection and a smartphone can write a news story and publish it in print format on a free Google site or other hosting services. On that same site they can telecast live video reports from the field at zero cost for the live streaming beyond what they pay for their smartphone data service, which can be had for around $25 a month for an unlimited plan. They can save those same videos for free on a Google site via YouTube for later on-demand viewing by the public. They can sell ads on their site just as newspapers do. They can do everything a newspaper can do, and much more, at essentially zero publication cost. They do not pay for ink, paper, or printing presses, not to mention the mechanics to keep them running. What is there to complain about?
If a love for journalism courses through your veins you should dance a little jig, click your heels together, and get out there and get to work. Within a few days you could be the publisher of an electronic newspaper and owner of a television station! Mess with the format and the schedule a bit and you have a magazine. If radio is your thing, turn off the camera, write your script, and post or live stream a podcast with your free software, and you’re in the audio news business. What’s better than that?
Actually, there may be something a little better than that, and that would be a small team doing all of the above. The business model can be enhanced by a proper division of labor based on personal preferences, training, and skills. Not everyone is cut out to be a field reporter, or a video and Internet technician, or an ad salesperson. Some thrive on one task and some on others. But a cohesive team, perhaps even something as small as traditional mom and pop community newspapers, sharing the ownership and work of a news operation as described above could quickly become a thriving local journalistic institution, at very low cost, and could serve the same social interests, and more, as the local ink-on-paper news operations that are rapidly dying out. What is there to lose?
If there has ever been a time when we should thank God for the freedoms that we have in the US, and in particular the freedom of the press guaranteed by the United States Constitution, it is now! Everything detailed above applies in all freedom-loving countries where there is general access to the Internet, but in the United States it is incredibly easy to start and maintain a news operation that is solidly protected by well-settled constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press and freedom of speech. And here is one last little secret: The way you report the news does not have to be fair and balanced. Under the constitutional protections that we enjoy in the US, your reporting or advocacy can be unfair and unbalanced. If you want to be fair and balanced, go for it. If not, that’s what freedom of the press is all about. Carpe Diem!
